“If we don’t get our fiscal house in order in a way that is fair and equitable, so that everybody feels like they have responsibilities to not only themselves and their families but also to the country that has given them so much opportunity, we’re going to have problems.”

And as for making the “rich” “pay their fair share” – if the rich are to start doing so, they are due for a huge tax cut.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution affords us equal protection before the law. Meaning we are all to be treated equally by the law.

Yet we have a progressive income tax – where different people have the law applied to them differently depending upon how much money they make. This is ridiculous, in addition to being unconstitutional.

The top current rate is 35% – and President Obama calls for an increase to 39.6%. (Either percentage is an obscene theft, but let us move on.) There are five additional, lesser, tiered rates – again, descending as one’s income decreases.

With the third-quarter fundraising deadline looming Friday, all eyes will be on what the two top GOP presidential contenders have raised. The big question: Can Rick Perry, after entering the race in mid-August, haul in more than Mitt Romney, who already tapped many of his top supporters in the previous quarter?

Among Republican insiders, the assumption is that both will clear $10 million – but few have a feel for by just how much.

Blablabla, who cares? What about Herman Cain?

Here’s the picture that goes with the story. See if you if notice anyone is missing:

In case you’re wondering, Cain gets 0 mention in the four page story. John Huntsman who has wavered between 1 and 2% in the polls is featured prominently. Uh – huh.

Insiders and political pros never recognize a superstar when they see one. Herman Cain is just such a star. Now that Rick Perry has been unmasked as a weak debater and an even weaker opponent of illegal immigration, conservatives are turning their lonely eyes to Cain. A stellar debate performance on Fox News led to a smashing victory in the President5 straw poll in Florida and a strong third place finish — behind Romney and Perry — in the Michigan straw poll. Both Michigan and Florida are likely among the seven states that will hold primaries or caucuses in February (and they are the two biggest of the seven).

Here is a man who offers an alternative to Obama’s class warfare. His life story shows that Obama’s route to the top — through affirmative action, community organizing, and a climb up the political ladder — is not the only one available to minorities. His combination of hard work in the private sector, entrepreneurial initiative, and managerial skill can also get you there. He embraces the successful as role models not as objects of envy. He does not hate rich people. He wants us all to become rich.

Perry’s Thursday debate debacle created a dilemma for many of the 3,500 delegates credentialed for the straw-poll who had come to Orlando planning to cast their ballots for the front-runner from Texas. Among those was state Rep. Scott Plakon, a popular conservative from a district north of Orlando. “Like a lot of people, he showed up expecting to vote for Perry,” said Republican activist Sarah Rumpf, who was sitting with Plakon and his wife Susie — all supporters of GOP Senate hopeful Adam Hasner — at a candidate forum Friday afternoon when Plakon mentioned he was thinking about endorsing Cain. Rumpf immediately contacted Cain’s campaign staff and, a few hours later, the Plakons met privately with Cain and found they had much in common. Like Cain, Plakon is a businessman and a strong foe of Obamacare, and was recently named Florida Legislator of the Year by Americans for Prosperity, an activist group deeply involved in the Tea Party movement. Plakon’s endorsement lent important prestige to Cain’s candidacy and, when it was announced at a gathering of Cain’s supporters Friday night in a packed ballroom at the Rosen Centre Hotel, the atmosphere was “electric,” Rumpf said.

After a few caffeine-heavy refills at our corner table, I asked him about President Obama’s new effort to raise taxes on the wealthy, and Cain just about blew a blood vessel–especially when I mentioned the part where Obama says it’s about “math” not “class warfare.”

“Can I be blunt? That’s a lie,” Cain said, before the sound of his voice began to rise noticeably higher. “You’re not supposed to call the president a liar. Well if you’re not supposed to call the president a liar, he shouldn’t tell a lie. If it’s not class warfare, it’s highway robbery. He wants us to believe it’s not class warfare, oh okay, it’s not class warfare. Pick my pockets, because that’s what he’s doing!”

Cain paused, took a breath and looked at me.

“I’m not mad at you, I just get passionate about this stuff,” he said. “I have to tell people because I get so worked up . . . . I’m listening to all this bullshit that he’s talking about, ‘fairness’ and ‘balanced approach’ to get this economy going.”

Cain views his surprise win as a pushback against the media’s narrative about the GOP primary.

“The voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media. The media has been trying to turn this into a two-person race,” Cain says, noting that coverage prior to the straw poll had been fixated on Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

“When the media’s not happy with who are the supposed frontrunners,” Cain adds, “they keep trying to recruit somebody else. So now they’re saying ‘Well, it’s wide open, Governor Christie, why don’t you get in the race?’” Cain thinks the media doesn’t represent what Republicans are thinking. “The people in Florida said, ‘the voice of the people is going to make that determination.’”

On the heels of presidential candidate Herman Cain’s win in the Florida straw poll last weekend, the radio host Dennis Miller announced Monday that he’s endorsing Cain for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Two weeks ago, the media’s heart went aflutter when it learned that the president had borrowed a page right out of ole’ Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt book with the launch of Attack Watch. The response by everyone, even fans of Obama, was immediate and brutal. Yet where Obama took about 24 hours to crash and burn, someone else has stepped in with a far stealthier method of ferreting out the traitors amongst us: none other than our old friends, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a “Social Listening Platform” whose function is to “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.” It will “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment [ED:LOL] of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.” Said otherwise, the Fed has just entered the counterespionage era and will be monitoring everything written about it anywhere in the world. After all, why ask others to snitch for you and anger everyone as Obama found out the hard way, when you can pay others to create the supreme FIATtack WatchTM using money you yourself can print in unlimited amounts. And once the Internet is completely “transparent”, the Fed will next focus on telephone conversations, and finally will simply bug each and every otherwise “private” location in the world. Because very soon saying that “printing money is treason” will be treason, and such terrorist thoughts must be pre-crimed before they even occur.

Want to make a cable-news Democratic party-strategist squirm? Ask her what she means by the “fair share” that must be paid by the rich. (No point further tarrying over what she means by “the rich,” since we already know they are billionaires and millionaires who jump about in corporate jets while somehow making only $200,000 a year.) In response to the “fair share” question, you will hear how Bush single-handedly destroyed the economy. You will hear about the diabolical Republican plan to desert the elderly, starve the young, and exploit everyone in between. You will hear a vague concession that “the rich” must be allowed to keep some semblance of their wealth — enough, at least, to keep them in the game of “paying it forward” to future generations of government wards. But what you won’t hear is a number.

This week, I had the pleasure of watching the Fox Business Channel’s Stuart Varney expertly press the Obama Left’s glib evaders on the subject. How much is a “fair share,” he doggedly inquired? A quarter? A third? Should the rich have to split their take 50-50 with Leviathan? Or is their success such a blight on social justice that the government (and the Teamsters, and the teachers’ unions, and the basket-case blue states) should get something much closer to all of it?

This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” President Obama whined at a September 15 Democratic National Committee gathering in a private Washington residence.

Now that his “Blame Bush” hobby horse finally has retired to the glue factory, Obama resorts to pinning America’s woes on the “Do-Nothing Congress.” If only these parliamentarians would stop taking endless lunches, sipping cocktails at Capitol Hill happy hours, and napping at their desks, America might have some chance of returning to normal.

Obama speaks as if the entire Congress were in lock-step Republican opposition to his every initiative. Damn those pesky elephants!

Of course, Obama’s rhetoric cynically turns things upside down.

Congress consists of a do-something House of Representatives, run by Republicans, and a do-nothing Senate controlled by Obama’s very own Democrats. Obama evidently believes that if he can keep spouting clever lies and distortions, no one will call him on it. Well, it’s time to do so.

The 112th Congress has been characterized by a very active legislative pace in the Republican House, featuring the passage of many measures designed to revive America’s exhausted economy.

The Democratic Senate, meanwhile, is a much lazier place, where House Republicans’ measures go to die.

ObamaCare is not about health care, per se; rather, it is intended to dictate to business and the individual what insurance they must buy, what health care they are allowed to access, and ultimately what behavior is acceptable — all at the whim of a centralized bureaucracy. The Dodd-Frank Bill firmly establishes the concept of “too big to fail” for certain financial institutions, thereby subjecting them to the absolute control of the state while allowing, and in many cases forcing, others to cease doing business, as well as instituting lending and operating policies determined by government regulators.

The Obama regime has thrown out the rule of law when it comes to the rights of private investors by their actions against the bondholders of Chrysler and General Motors, as well as forcefully taking over and operating both companies and others as quasi-private entities. They have chosen which businesses will succeed or fail by the taxpayer financing of companies such a Solyndra among a score of others, others of which have failed. The Obama appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are now dictating to companies where they can locate and are attempting to force their workers into unions without secret ballots.

The mantra of public-works spending is alive and well and constantly being used to justify massive government spending. The demonization of the rich has taken on a new role in the Obama era, as the rich are now being singled out as responsible for all the problems created by the Obama policies and are a potential target for retaliation. The current proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy and the so-called “Buffett Tax” are solely an attempt to rally the people into a unified anger over the need to punish a perceived foe — in order to shift the spotlight off the failure of the current government.

A key characteristic of the reality of fascist thinking is rampant cronyism and corruption. Certain capitalists, wishing to ingratiate themselves with the state, are willing to fund the election of those in power in exchange for favorable government contracts and avoidance of regulatory wrath. Recently, much of Wall Street, Hollywood, the unions, major companies such as General Electric, and the super-wealthy such as Warren Buffett are willing to sleep with those in power and be used as props in any propaganda campaign initiated by the Obama regime.

The Obama administration has, through the Justice Department and other agencies, behaved exactly as many quasi-fascist regimes in the past — almost all of whom have been governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect themselves and their friends from accountability.

Here’s one the mainstream media isn’t going to tell you: County sheriffs in Wyoming are demanding that federal agents actually abide by the Constitution, or face arrest. Even better, a U.S. Federal District Court agreed.

The court decision was the result of a suit against both the BATF and the IRS by Mattis and other members of the Wyoming Sheriff’s Association. The suit in the Wyoming federal court district sought restoration of the protections enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Wyoming Constitution.

Guess what? The District Court ruled in favor of the sheriffs. In fact, they stated, Wyoming is a sovereign state and the duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has law enforcement powers exceeding that of any other state or federal official.” Go back and re-read this quote.

The court confirms and asserts that “the duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has law enforcement powers EXCEEDING that of any other state OR federal official.” And you thought the 10th Amendment was dead and buried — not in Wyoming, not yet.

A new bill has been introduced in the Montana State Legislature which require the County Sheriff be notified before any federal agents are allowed to enter the state with the intention of carrying out law enforcement actions. The bill provides not only for pre-notification, but the Sheriff must also give consent before federal agents may proceed.

Like this:

This explosive story by Sipsey Street Irregulars puts to bed once and for all, the notion that the ATF’s Fast & Furious gun-walking operation was somehow botched.A letter to the Phoenix ATF Group VII supervisor David Voth to a Federal Firearms Licensee in Arizona, fell into the hands of bloggers Vanderboegh & Codrea, showing that the DOJ didn’t “lose track” of weapons purchased by “straw buyers” under surveillance by the ATF and destined for the Mexican drug cartels.

The existence of this letter provided to these reporters by a previously reliable source familiar with the Fast and Furious investigation, coupled with interviews of other sources across the country which put it into context, provides startling proof that the Federal government did not merely “lose track” of weapons purchased by “straw buyers” under surveillance by the ATF and destined for the Mexican drug cartels. In an undercover operation ordered by Fast and Furious supervisor David Voth, the U.S. government purchased firearms with taxpayer money from licensed firearms dealers, instructed them to conduct the sales “off the books,” and used an ATF agent, John Dodson, to deliver them directly to people that Dodson believed were conducting them across the border.

According one source close to the Issa committee and knowledgeable of its workings, this revelation “puts a stake in the heart of the ‘botched sting operation’ lie.” He continued, “There never was any ‘sting,’ there was only a deliberate effort to provide weapons to the DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations).” He added, “this was one hundred percent us — our money, our guy, our (gun)walking.”

This source also provided context and explanation of how the letter came to exist in the first place.

(It should be noted that although we would never reveal our sources for any story, it is important in this case for the readers to understand where we did NOT get it. Neither John Dodson nor his lawyer provided us this letter. Nor did they pass it through to us via a third party, as the DOJ has been known to do lately.)

“Dodson was given this undercover assignment by Voth,” said the source, “to purchase weapons directly and provide them to the smugglers. He was operating under cover, pretending to be a ‘straw buyer.'” He continued, “I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn’t want to be hung out to dry” by Voth.

A source also said that the undercover assignment was an effort by Voth to “dirty him (Dodson) up,” pointing out that by the time of the undercover assignment that Dodson’s vocal opposition to “letting guns walk” was well known to his superiors in the Phoenix ATF office.

Sources also describe a second letter from Voth to another FFL authorizing Dodson to purchase two more Draco pistols. One source stated flatly: “Issa and Grassley have copies of both letters, and have had for a long time.”

If Issa had this letter in his possession, why has he been characterizing Fast & Furious as “criminally stupid”, or a “dumb, useless, and lethal” as if it was a botched operation? It was clearly more than that.

You may also find Vanderboegh’s postabout the frustrating odyssey his trip home from a gun rights policy conference (behind enemy lines) in Chicago, became, to an interesting read.

RELATED:

A couple of recent stories that bring home with horrifying clarity, savagery of the people Obama’s been arming with high powered weapons:

According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols — two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.

Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.

This was not a “buy-bust” or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were “ordered” to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.

According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

According to a story posted Sunday on a website dedicated to covering Fast and Furious, Voth gave Dodson the assignment to “dirty him up,” since Dodson had become the most vocal critic of the operation.

“I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn’t want to be hung out to dry by Voth,” a source told the website “Sipsey Street Irregulars.”

ATF Special Agent Larry Alt, a former decorated soldier and police officer, an instructor at the ATF academy, said he and fellow whistleblower John Dodson were transferred to dead-end jobs after standing up to Agent-in-Charge Bill Newell. The ATF in Phoenix and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona then attempted to conceal the role they played in directing area gun dealers to sell weapons to buyers the agency knew were breaking the law. “We were transferred from the group. We were placed in positions away from the investigation itself, denied access to the investigation,” said Alt. “I would view that as a measure of control and if you want to call it a cover up, that would be an accurate statement.”

It’s not like we haven’t seen this President (of all of us) make disturbingly ideological statements in the past. We’ve seen it again and again, Obama behaving like a hyper-partisan political id rather than a statesman. This weekend, while on a fund-raising trip in California, he did it again:

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,” he said, to applause. “It’s true. You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay.”

“That’s not reflective of who we are,” Mr. Obama said. “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election.”

Did the President of the United States just link the Texas wildfires to Global Warming? Huh!The very same President who took three months to declare Texas a disaster area after wildfires scorched more than 1.2 million acres of the Lone Star State?

Just wow.

And audiences (plural!) are cheering the prospect of someone dying because they don’t have ObamaCare. Uh huh. Someone is reading the Daily Kos, again, I see.

Obama’s examples of “tea party extremism” really aren’t worth mentioning unless you want to unfairly smear an entire group of people. At the tea party debate, Obama referenced, people were cheering Ron Paul’s answer, not the plant yelling, “let him die!”

Sarah Rumpfwas at the debate in Florida. She reported over the weekend what she saw and heard, up close and personal:

The debate included video questions that were submitted on YouTube, and one came from a soldier serving in Iraq who is gay and asked about the candidates’ opinions on don’t ask don’t tell. There was audible booing after his question…however, please note that it was not the crowd booing. It was only one or two people.

I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back (here’s my tweet of the video screen that was right in front of us). The person who booed was just a few rows in front of us. The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, “Shhhh!” “No!” “Shut up, you idiot!” etc.

Sound like plants to you? Does to me. I could be wrong, but we’re starting to see a pattern of these, now. I think I’m smelling the flop-sweat of desperation coming from some rat-hole in Chi-town. David Axelrod, the father of astroturf, is masterminding Obama’s re-election strategy from Chicago, as you know.. .The left-wing blogosphere jumped on these shocking, shocking examples of “tea-party hate” to frame the narrative as “The Adult in the Room” against the unhinged tea party extremists.. And now the Community Organizer in Chief, himself is doing it.

The Democrat party has been trying to label the tea party as dangerous “extremists” ever since its inception. But, the most dangerous extremists, the lunatic fringe, (as they show us repeatedly),are the President’s own minions. They are reflective of what the President is.

Republicans should be on notice to not only be on their very best behavior at these events, but to be on the alert for plants from now until the election.

Add this to the pile of, “Imagine if a Republican had used a tragedy in a blue state for political gain column”. Of course it won’t get the same play because the MFM is in Obama’s pocket and many reporters/editors/producers probably agree with him. Also, at this point, no one actually expects Obama to be anything but a classless son of a bitch.

The president is president of all of us. Not just the Democratic Party. Even during a campaign.

It’s one thing to lambaste your opponents and their ideas. But the president of the United States should not be describing the other Party as un-American. It’s worse than sordid, divisive politics. It’s an ignominious, even somewhat frightening thing for a president to do, and it demonstrates a real ignorance on the part of Obama about the Constitutional role of his position.

Our own D.C. Insider had this to say about the incident in an emailed response to us just this morning:

“Look for further stagings like this. There is a plan underway to portray President Obama as a victim of an unhinged and radicalized far right America. It fits right in with the racial divide plan, the class warfare plan, it’s all part of the re-election package. This outburst, if not directly planned by the Obama team, was at the very least allowed to happen. They wanted this footage. They wanted this conflict. And there is more to follow. How far the Obama folks want to push this remains to be seen. My instincts are telling me very far. Dangerously far.”

-Just yesterday the New York Times publishes an editorial titled, “Why the Anti-Christ Matters in Politics”. The editorial attempts to portray conservatives as hard-line evangelical crazies. Coincidence? Perhaps.

-Shortly after the New York Times editorial was published, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell does a snide segment titled “Is Barack Obama the Anti-Christ?” – which in essence adds a visual to the New York times piece and reinforces the idea of religious conservatives in America as dangerous morons. How O’Donnell already had a segment ready for viewing on this topic so soon after the NYT column is…interesting.

-Lastly, the Associated Press goes to print on the now infamous “Anti-Christ Heckler” story and the now viral video of the incident.

ALL OF THESE EVENTS TOOK PLACE WITHIN 24 HOURS.

Allow me to refresh your bad memories from the past few years, if I may.

Remember the McCain/Palin rallies that were characterized by the Obama camp as barely distinguishable from Klan rallies? Remember how Palin’s “extremist rhetoric” (she dared call Obama what he is, a Socialist) was supposedly causing dangerously unhinged wingers to shout out death threats against the nice, clean, articulate black candidate? Those death threats were investigated by the FBI, who could find no evidence what-so-ever that they ever happened. Just like people shouting the N’ word at the CBC at the Kill the (ObamaCare) Bill in DC in 1/2010 never happened. This is Alinsky 101.